Glossary - D

Click on letter to jump to the list of terms starting with that letter. Click on a term to jump to the full definition. The excerpts on this page show the first line of each definition.

• D.P.H. — Doctor of Public Health (degree)
• DACCA — Distribution by ACCount, (a monthly consolidated salary expense report)
• DAPER — Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation
• DARPA — (Federal) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• Data Item — Data Warehouse term: Component of a table catalog, also called a field.
• Data Warehouse — The Data Warehouse is the Institute's reporting system. It provides the MIT community with integrated data from various administrative systems stored in one location.
• DCAA — Defense Contract Audit Agency
• DCAD — Departmental Consulting and Application Development
• DCEE — Discover Civil and Environmental Engineering (a pre-Orientation program)
• DCM — Division of Comparative Medicine
• DCMA — Defense Contract Management Agency
• DCSP — Direct Salary Charging Plan (used in the School of Engineering)
• DCTI — Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation
• DDC — Dewey Decimal Catalogue (Libraries)
• DDEC — Development, Design, Engineering and Construction (in the Department of Facilities)
• Debathena — The latest version of the Athena operating environment, based on Ubuntu Linux. Also known as Debathena and Athena 10.
• Delete (email) — When you delete email it is not immediately erased from the mail server or your local computer. Instead, it is marked for removal. Email marked for removal that has not been purged can be recovered. Deleted email stored on the mail server continues to count towards your quota until you purge it.
• Description — Data Warehouse Explorer term: a lengthier explanation of the table or the field in a table. The table and field description contains information about the data in the table and field respectively.
• DFS — Distributed File System. The file system used by the WIN.MIT.EDU machines (WinAthena).
• DGI — Diabetes Genetics Initiative (partnership between Broad Institute, Harvard, Novartis, and Lund University)
• DH — Department Head
• DHCP — An Internet protocol for automating the configuration of computers that use TCP/IP.
• DIC — Division of Industrial Cooperation (former name of the Industrial Liaison Program)
• DID — Direct Inward Dial (DID) number. A DID is a telephone number that can be dialed from outside of MIT, is routed to MIT's telephone network by other carriers on whose network the number may be dialed, and is then connected to an MIT telephone by MIT's voice network. MIT pays for a pool of direct inward dial numbers from outside telecommunications providers.
• DINDI — Distribution by Individual (support staff payroll account sheets)
• DIRT — Data Incident Response Team
• DIT — Dublin Institute of Technology
• DKE — Delta Kappa Epsilon
• D-Lab — Development Lab (Introduction to Development course in DUSP)
• DLC — Departments, Labs, and Centers (DLCs) is used as a catch-all term to indicate an organizational unit at MIT
• DLCs — Departments, Laboratories and Centers - used to refer to all academic and research areas; may be used to include central units.
• DMA — DuPont MIT Alliance
• DMCs — Distributed Mail Centers
• DME — Department of Mechanical Engineering
• DMSE — Department of Materials Science and Engineering
• DNS — An Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses.
• DOD — (Federal) Department of Defense
• DOE (Department of Education ) — The Federal Department of Education's mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.
• DOE (Department of Energy ) — Department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material.
• DOL — (Federal) Department of Labor
• DOME — Distributed Object-based Modeling Environment (for designing on the web)
• DormCon — Dormitory Council
• DormLine — Dormitory telephone exchange
• Double E — Electrical Engineering
• Draper — Charles Stark Draper Lab, Inc.
• Dropbox — Dropbox is a cloud-storage service.
• DS — Departmental Services (Information Systems & Technology)
• DSA — Dean for Student Affairs (old name)
• DSL — Dean for Student Life
• DSO — Disabilities Services Office
• DSP — Division of Sponsored Programs (former name of the Office of Sponsored Programs)
• DSpace — An open-source institutional digital repository developed by the MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Co. to capture, store, distribute and preserve the intellectual output of MIT's faculty and research staff
• DSPG — Digital Signal Processing Group (Prof. Alan Oppenheim's research group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics)
• DSP Lab — Digital Signal Processing Laboratory
• DSR — Division of Sponsored Research (former name for the Office of Sponsored Research)
• DSRE — Division for Study and Research in Education (old)
• DTE — Dance Theater Ensemble
• DU — Delta Upsilon
• DUE — The MIT Dean for Undergraduate Education and associated offices and business units
• DUNS — Data Universal Numbering System (MIT's DUNS number, 00-142-5594, must be included on applications for federal grants and cooperative agreements.)
• Duo — A two-factor authentication system that leverages cellphones, landlines and smartphones as an "Approve" or "Deny" system to identify users.
• DUSP — Department of Urban Studies and Planning
• DynaMIT — A real-time traffic management system used in the Intelligent Transportation Systems lab at MIT or a summer camp for low income kids held at MIT to ignite their interests in STEM careers